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The Umbral Choir/Affinity
}} Affinity Traits Assimilation Traits As noted above, when you do assimilate a minor faction, you will gain its assimilation trait, even though the faction is otherwise "deleted". There are a few of these that are quite noteworthy because either they're something whose "per planet" modifier works on your Sanctuaries, or because they're particularly useful for the UC's own design. Exploration-related The UC are extremely good curiosity explorers, because not only do they have some of the best explorer ships (for that purpose) in the game, but they also are able to freely enter enemy space and explore their systems without getting shot at. * Eyder "Relic Peddlers": +5 on Systems per Curiosity Discovered on Empire * Pulsos "Thinkers and Tinkers I": +1 on Systems per Curiosity Discovered on Empire Hacking-related There's only one hacking-related minor faction. Both of the boosts they give are quite desirable to the UC, especially the hacking-speed one, because if you get enough hacking speed, it's possible to beat traces on shorter routes, which means the overall speedup (by simply being allowed to use the shorter route at all) ends up often being a factor-of-two rather than the actual speed boost the trait gives. * Kalmat "Evolutionary Algorithms": -10% Bandwidth costs * Kalmat "Twitch Infiltrators": +10% Hacking speed Manpower-related The UC has severe problems (probably an order-of-magnitude worse than everyone else), due to three reasons: a severe, inherent malus they're given (-75% growth), a very high demand (to stock the of each Sanctuary, wherein each single sanctuaried planet costs 200 ), and also because they have extremely low growth for a large part of the game. * Tikanan "Infinite Soldiers": +100 income on Empire. This assimilation trait will essentially solve this problem during the early game. * Yuusho "Mud Stompers": -10% cost per Troops on Ground Battles. Not nearly as impactful as the Tikanan law, but anything helps. Sanctuary-related Quite a few assimilation traits work on planets with sanctuaries. As a rule, it seems that traits which provide boosts do not work on sanctuaries, but the others do. * Amblyr "Profitable Exploitations": +40 on planets with Strategic Resources. * Galvran "Mines over Matter": +40 on planets with Strategic Resources. * Galvran "Cryo Mining": +20 on Cold Planets, +25% Strategic Resource income. Besides working on Sanctuaried planets, this also works on all of your Crescents - they're all "Cold". * Pilgrims "Anomalous Science": +5 per Anomaly * Sefaloros "Workspace Oddity": +25 per Anomaly on Systems. * Sowers "Soil Healers": +25 on sterile, +2 on planets with reduced anomalies. Besides working on Sanctuaried Planets, this conveniently fits the criterion of all of your Crescents in the Nexus - they're all "Sterile". Nexus-related There are a few assimilation bonuses of note due to them affecting your Nexus (i.e., your primary system). * Kal'Tik'Ma "Stalwart Stoics": +10 on Sterile, -25% . You have 5 planets in your Nexus, and this is essentially a +50 boost. It's a pretty big deal, because - since the Nexus is your only source of either one - the and malus from low has an outsized effect on the UC. * Sowers "Soil Healing" (see above) * Galvran "Cryo Mining" (see above) Population Traits Political Traits Unique Laws Because of the unique playstyle of the Umbral Choir, a few of the laws are replaced with alternate variants better suited to their mechanics: Industrialists Bits to Bytes "Simulation of Artificial Sustenance Act" (replaces "New Colony Rule"): +20 per Sanctuary Religious Dust and Grub "Tithe for the Harmony of All" (replaces "Species Stability Act"): +5 per Original Empire Population, +10% on Home System Nightshifters "Maximising Sleeper Productivity Act" (replaces "Peace and Prayer Act"): +1% per Sleepers on Home System Ecologists Umbral Anglers "Private Vacuum Drift Fishing Bill" (replaces "Cool Copies Clause") +2 per Umbral Shadows on Home System. +2 per Pop on Planets Backdoor Boon "Siphoning Enemy Resources Act" (replaces "Power to the People Act") +1% and +1% per Backdoor, on Home System Elite Shadows "Elite Shadows Identification and Training Mandate" (replaces "All Hands Dictum") +20 per Turn per Umbral Shadow pop. +10 per Umbral Shadows pop on Home System Ships A first thing that must be mentioned is that all Umbral Choir ships have cloaking. Not just the faction-specific ones, but even the minor-faction/mercenary ships, hero ships - everything. It's as though they've all been equipped with cloaking modules (which can be turned on and off), but it's just a passive thing they get for free without needing to equip a module. It's upgraded at similar places in the military tech tree to where other factions would get cloaking modules (albeit at earlier tech stages), but it's just instantly applied to everything. Note that the UC does not however get any special detection bonus - they have to detect cloaked ships the hard way just like everyone else. The closest thing they have to a unique bonus is that UC heroes, which they're guaranteed to have some access to, have a skill that does give Tier 3 detection to their fleet. In all other respects, the Umbral Choir ships are just ordinary ES2 spaceships. Most Umbral Choir ships have a lot of defense and especially utility slots, and it's very common for them to have hybrid defense/utility slots. The gross implication of this is that they're generally pretty fast, and/or tanky, and even when optimizing for defense they'll still have rather good speed. Colonizer The Umbral Choir does not use colonization ships, and unlike a few other factions, they don't have an offbeat "utility ship" (like the Vodyani harvester) that outfits similarly. Creating your closest equivalent of colonies - "Sanctuaries", is done via the hacking interface instead. Explorer = Strategic Implications = Since you can't shoot back, all that equipping the defense modules would do would be to allow you to survive perhaps 1/3 of a usual fight (against a ~2CP fleet) for 1/3 of the battle. Because of this, you'll almost universally want to treat this as a ship with 4 utility slots. This is utterly useless as an "early-game cheap fighter", it's also one of the best "actually being used for exploration" explorer ships. One of the side-effects of this is that, as the UC, you'll more or less be required to build some L1 attacker/protector to deal with the pirates that will inevitably spawn near you, since otherwise you'll truly have nothing but your hero ship. Attacker = Strategic Implications = This is a reasonably well-rounded ship. It's got enough utility slots to keep up with the protector if you want have super-fast 4-engine ships, and it'll still have 2 attack/2 defense left over in that case, but you can also kit this in the direction of a 2-engine ship with 3 attack/3 defense slots. If you compare that latter loadout to e.g. the Riftborn attacker ship, it's simply got less slots overall (the Riftborn attack can do 2-engine with 4 attack/4 defense). It's still a pretty serviceable ship without any strong weaknesses. Protector = Strategic Implications = This ship has only 1 attack slot, but has a great deal of defense and especially, utility slots. Besides the obvious tack of slotting the utility slots with enhancers/etc, another key strategic option is equipping at least one of the slots with either the "Wildlife Unit" (+10 /turn) or the "Self-Surveiller" (+5 /turn) granted in the first part of the UC quest. Essentially, the designers gave you some spare slots for a reason. Coordinator = Strategic Implications = This ship has a slightly low number of attack slots, and an ample collection of both defense and utility slots. It's a very straightforward "tank". Hunter = Strategic Implications = This ship is a bit low on defense slots, has a decent number of attack slots, and a bunch of utility slots (potentially 5). This is a fairly straightforward "DPS" ship. Carrier = Strategic Implications = The UC carrier has a rather low number of Squadron modules - only 3. Following with the common theme they have, it's got a fair number of defense and utility slots. You may want to field some fighters if enemies are bringing bombers to bear, but broadly speaking you'll probably want to equip this ship as a gunboat/tank hybrid.